Christa Giles

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artistic success immensely. I often wonder,
however, whether the public understand that
his success is entirely due to the fact that he
did not accept their standard, but realised his
own. 576
In contrast Huysmans insists upon an artistic cognoscenti,
and his art criticism expresses the conviction that whatever
is popular is invariably bad–or at least cheapened by that
popularity. He continuously championed artists who were
unknown, and indeed felt it was the role of the critic to use
his own judgement and talent for the purposes of
challenging established authority. In his essay ˝Du
Dilettantisme,˝ he vilifies the pusillanimity of such critics
who, in order to avoid jeopardizing their reputations, do
not write of contemporary artists, who use catch phrases
and obscure language to suggest profundity, who assess
painting with preconceived notions and prejudices. In
short, he rejects the authority of the establishment. Wilde
also rejects authority (particularly of public opinion)
because, like Huysmans, he sees art as the ˝full expression
of a personality,˝ 577 and views the individual as pitted
against the masses and the state in an assertion of his own
personal vision. Huysmans definitely had a predilection for
such artists who had not yet been ˝polluted in the eyes of